Mutabaruka for national hero?

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Our people are special! Trust me, we seem to have a unique ability to transform the sublime into the silly and take the edge of seriousness and substance off any and everything. And starting a petition seems to have now become the newest style and fashion bandwagon.

Yeah man, some fickle and foolish petitions start flying and floating fast and furious now peeps. So after taking a cursory look at some of the petitions that have been started by people on the Office of the Prime Minister website, I feel like starting an anti-petition petition!

Yes, I signed the petition asking that Miss Lou be declared a national icon and a statue of her erected. I also signed the ‘save the Cockpit Country’ petition. But I signed both of them reluctantly.

My reluctance at signing the Miss Lou petition was due to two reasons. One is my strong feeling that Miss Lou is already a beloved and revered national icon and we don’t need any petition to officially confirm that. If anything, she should now be declared a National Hero.

The other reason for my reluctance was I heard from a reliable source that the Miss Lou had, before her passing, personally expressed to folks near and dear to her that she don’t want any statue to be erected of her and put in public for birds to come poop on.

Of course, that matter of the bird poop could be easily addressed by putting some covering on her statue or making the statue a replica of one of those iconic pictures of her performing in the national Pantomime with an umbrella.

As for the Cockpit country petition, I was reluctant as well because I feel it is sad that the government should not need 15,000 signatures to convince them about the value of protecting our country’s environment.

Having visited the website to sign those two, I discovered to my amusement and bemusement some other very interesting petitions. Like the one, demanding that Mutabaruka [aka Allan Hope] be made a national hero. The joke though, is that it is started by someone who spelt his birth name not Allan, but ‘Holland’.

There’s also a petition demanding that we abolish all stoplights and one about making paternity leave mandated by law. But how baby father must get leave when dem already leave? Look yah nuh, I want to start a petition to end petitions! What you think?